


Red Dirt Girl

by LunaRowena



Series: Watcher Lillian [2]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Ranger Watcher
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23220037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaRowena/pseuds/LunaRowena
Summary: None of this was supposed to happen. She wasn't even supposed to be here, a Readceran in the Dyrwood. But now Lillian is trapped in a battle for her sanity and getting a heap of trouble along the way.
Relationships: Edér Teylecg/The Watcher
Series: Watcher Lillian [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1183211
Comments: 23
Kudos: 11





	1. Beginnings

People wouldn’t stay inside themselves. They kept leaking out.

Lillian Veres closed her eyes, letting her wolf, Gideon, lead her through the streets of Gilded Vale. Just looking at the tree of corpses in the middle of town gave her a headache, and not from disgust.

This entire “adventure” was a mistake. It wasn’t safe for a Readceran in the Dyrwood even now, but it had been the quickest way to the Republics. Now her entire caravan was gone and here she was, alone and losing her mind.

It wasn’t going to end like this. One step at a time.


	2. Dance

Her Pa had always called it “dancing the hempen jig.”

That tree loomed over Gilded Vale and over Lillian’s mind. Their small group, three strangers banded together for safety, but how much safety could they grasp back from the noose?

Eder, who worshiped the wrong god. Aloth, from the wrong foreign country. And Lillian, who worshiped the wrong god, was from the wrong country, and saw ghosts.

She offered them her protection, but she was too close to the final dance herself. One misstep and it would be her last bow.

They needed to get out of Gilded Vale. Soon.


	3. Feast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double drabble today because people kept talking.

“What are you doing?” asked Aloth nervously.

Lillian finished stringing the boar up the tree. “We already killed them. Might as well eat one. Shame we don’t have a way to preserve the meat out here. Have to leave it to the scavengers.” Behind her, she could hear Gideon gouging himself on one of the boar’s companions. “If you’re squeamish at all, now would be a great time to bury yourself in a book.” This was a bit different than the rabbits he’d seen her dress down so far in their travels, and even those he’d had to look away from.

“Need any help?” Edér asked. “We used to butcher hogs on the farm. Imagine it’s basically the same idea.”

Lillian turned around. “You let me string this up by myself and now you’re asking if I need help?”

He shrugged. “You looked so focused. Didn’t want to suggest you couldn’t do it by yourself.

He wasn’t wrong. “I wouldn’t say ‘no’ to some help with skinning once it finishes draining.”

Aloth looked slightly green.

“Aloth, for real, go enjoy nature or something and we’ll let you know when we’re ready to cook it. Then we’ll have a regular feast.


	4. Nature

It was funny how many different types of dirt there was in the world. Air, sure. Size of the sky. Trees were obvious. But what Lillian always came back to was the dirt.

She had traveled quite a bit by now. And for all of Eora underneath her feet, it was all different. The dark, rich soil of the Ixamitl grasslands. The rocky ground of the Living Lands. The loose, medium brown earth of the Dyrwood. The red clay dirt of Readceras.

Dirt the color of her hair. It was part of her. The one thing she couldn’t leave behind.


	5. Lost

She was raised Eothasian, of course. Default religion in Readceras. Hadn’t thought much about it growing up, but for any country you were going to found a state around, he seemed like a pretty good one. Better than Skaen.

Hadn’t worked out.

Lillian had been twelve during the war. Still carried her country’s sins to the rest of the world.

Where had they gotten lost? Where had they strayed from a message of forgiveness to conquering saviors? What had gotten into Waidwen?

If he was supposed to have been Eothas, he was a god in need of his own redemption.


	6. Bitter

Lillian didn’t talk about where she was from, but she didn’t try to hide it either. Didn’t think she could. Felt like it was branded on her. Red dirt in her blood.

But she had traveled far beyond Readceras. Maybe she had lost enough of the accent because no Dyrwoodan merchant ever looked at her twice. Except maybe at her wolf.

But they weren’t the ones that saw her every day.

Aloth wasn’t from this area. She didn’t know that he’d be able to tell, or even care if he did. He had no stake in that fight.

But Edér had fought in that war. His brother died in that war. And as an Eothasian, he still couldn’t escape it.

She kept Gideon near and watched Edér closely. First out of wariness for her own safety, then because of… she didn’t know. Or didn’t want to admit. But he was friendly. Had her back. Didn’t treat her like an old enemy.

So if he didn’t know, she wouldn’t bring it up. Because if he knew and didn’t care, there was nothing to talk about except old wounds. But if didn’t know, she couldn’t handle those friendly eyes turning to bitterness.


	7. Tender

Gideon was, obviously, a wolf. At heart he was a wild animal and he didn’t like much of anyone except Lillian.

And apparently Edér.

It had taken hard work on Edér's part. Lots of bribes, offered hands, secret pets. But now he was just as likely to look to Edér for scritches as Lillian.

The look on Edér's face when Gideon had first curled up at his feet at the campfire was absolute joy. Maybe she should be jealous, but he was just so gods damn happy. This giant of a man absolutely melted around furry animals. It was… endearing.


	8. Storm

She killed Maerwald. Maybe she didn’t have a choice. Maybe it was a mercy to him. A man so lost in the storm of his past that he couldn’t recognize the present.

The visions of her past pressed up against her, too. As much as she tried to tell herself that it was a different person, it wasn’t her, she felt the memories. She lived them.

It drove Maerwald mad. Atrocities he couldn’t cope with.

Maybe if it was things they could cope with they wouldn’t awaken. The sins of the past they needed to weather in this new life.


	9. Study

Maybe it was so much of her life spent hunting, but Lillian liked to observe before she acted. Study the situation. Study the target. But when she had spent her time assessing, she acted. Decisively.

And so she found herself wondering why she spent this amount of effort watching Edér. Of course she took an interest in Aloth and Kana (and gods forbid, Durance, if only so he didn’t abandon his “trial” and stab her in her sleep), but not with the same… intensity. Curiosity?

She had spent all this time studying, but now what was her course of action?


	10. Memes

They still couldn’t escape that stupid tree. Maybe Lillian shouldn’t have expected to soon. Maybe it was their way of coping, the black humor. But whenever she did something particularly stupid, Edér still called her “Nineteen.”

Picking a direct fight with Raedric, “Didn’t know you were so eager to be Nineteen.” Climbing down the Endless Paths, “Nice place you brought us to, Nineteen.”

So when Edér threw himself in front of a forest lurker and promptly found himself flat on his back, after the danger passed Lillian couldn’t help clapping him on the shoulder. “Maybe I’m not Nineteen after all.”


	11. City

Lillian didn’t like to think of herself as a country bumpkin, but city folk she was not. The town she grew up near barely qualified as a town, let alone a city.

So she wasn’t quite sure if Defiance Bay was the largest city she’d ever been to, but it was definitely at least in the running.

It wasn’t just the number of people she found unsettling, it was the street paving. She was used to feeling the dirt under her boots. It was a disturbing disconnect.

And what was she supposed to do with a wolf at an inn?


	12. Obsess

Lillian didn’t want to care about that man, the man she saw at Cilant Lîs. In visions. In dreams. But everything, everything kept pointing her to him. The hope that he could fix her decaying mind. The contents of her decaying mind.

She didn’t owe the Dyrwood anything. It would probably be safer if she just left. She wasn’t Maerwald. She could take it.

And yet…

She wanted answers. To what, she wasn’t entirely sure. Sometimes she wondered if the answers she was looking for were even to her own questions.

So she kept chasing him. She would find him.


	13. Waiting

Lillian had never been a heavy sleeper, so she was used to running on a bad night’s rest. So it hadn’t hit her at first when she started sleeping less and less. Just the last one awake to put the campfire out, first one up in the morning to start breakfast. Nothing too abnormal about that.

But now, she sat awake in the dark watching her sleeping companions. With nothing to do but wait until sunrise. Lillian never had been a ‘wait-er.’ She’d always been a ‘do-er.”

So this waiting… with this waiting it was harder to run from herself.


	14. Play

Gideon and Itumaak faced each other. Neither moved as the wolf and the fox stared each other down.

The tip of Itumaak’s ear twisted forward.

The end of Gideon’s tail twitched.

Suddenly the stand off broke and the wolf chased the fox across the field. Itumaak had the advantage of being smaller and nimbler as he wove between rocks.

Turning around a corner, Gideon came to a stop, sniffing the air. He paced in a circle, trying to catch Itumaak’s trail.

With a yip, Itumaak jumped, barreling into Gideon’s side. The wolf rolled over on his back, admitting his surrender.


	15. Scream

So it was true about Woden. And they didn’t even know why.

Not for the first time did Lillian curse Waidwen.

She wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. For stealing Edér's brother. For stealing her brother. And for what? Waidwen failed. They died for nothing. So many people died for nothing.

So she did the only thing she could. Lillian wrapped her arms around Edér, drawing him into a hug. Sagani would tease her about it later, but they were both so close to breaking down. He reciprocated, breathing heavily as he held her close.

Damn Waidwen.


End file.
